Funding cuts fear as cycling mileage is forecast to drop

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A rise in road deaths was blamed on clement weather, which had attracted “vulnerable road users”Times photographer, Paul Rogers

Philip PankTransport Correspondent

Last updated at 12:01AM, November 8 2013

Cycle use and the distance travelled by bicycle are set to fall from 2015
despite hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and the increasing
popularity of cycling in the main cities, according to official forecasts.

Campaigners and academics seized on the data, revealed in Parliament by the
Transport Minister, to call into question the prediction models used by the
Department for Transport (DfT). They said that the predictions appeared to
ignore the rising use of bicycles and claimed that the data would be used as
justification for cuts in funding.

Annual cycle trips are forecast to rise from 1.2 billion in 2010 to 1.4
billion in 2015 but fall back to 1.3 billion in 2020 and remain at that
level until 2030. The annual total of miles pedalled is forecast to rise
from 2.9 billion in 2010 to 3.4 billion in 2015 but fall to 3.2 billion in
2020 and 3.0 billion in 2025.

The predictions are made by the DfT’s National Transport Model, which predicts
that the distance travelled by road vehicles will rise by 44 per cent by
2035.

Robert Goodwill, the Transport Minister, said in response to a parliamentary
question that the department would have spent £277 million directly on
cycling in the five years to 2015. It spent £140 million on cycling projects
in the five years to 2010.

Phil Goodwin, emeritus professor of transport at University College London,
questioned whether the Government’s model for future cycle use was fit for
purpose. He said: “It is not just that they got the numbers wrong, they got
the direction of change wrong, which seems to me to be a much bigger
problem. If it says it is going down when it is going up, there is something
seriously wrong with the model.”

He suggested that this, coupled with the DfT’s failure to make accurate
forecasts during the aborted West Coast Main Line franchise bid, called the
department’s predictions into question. “I would say that we are pretty
close to the position where one wants to be talking about independent
auditors,” Professor Goodwin said.

Roger Geffen, policy director at the cycling organisation CTC, said: “The
self-fulfilling predictions of the National Transport Model are seriously
undermining the case for quality cycle facilities. By assuming that motor
traffic will increase massively while cycle use remains static, it ensures
that councils’ computer programmes say ‘no’ to cycle facilities.”

Julian Huppert, co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group,
said: “I am disappointed that officials at DfT are using such unambitious
figures for cycling. These fall well below the figures we recommended in the
Get Britain Cycling report, which were unanimously supported by Parliament.”

The DfT said that its forecasts were based on rising incomes, falling motoring
costs, higher congestion, an ageing and growing population and additional
road infrastructure. A spokesman said: “The coalition Government is serious
about cycling and has invested more in this area than any previous British
government.”

The forecasts emerged as official figures showed that fatalities on the roads
had risen sharply last spring, with cyclists and motorcyclists bearing the
brunt of the increase. The DfT blamed the 12 per cent rise in deaths on the
clement weather, which it said had attracted “vulnerable road users”, in
contrast to last year’s wet weather.

A total of 450 people were killed in road accidents reported to the police in
the three months from April to June, compared with 402 people at the same
time last year. Casualties among car drivers and pedestrians fell, but they
rose by 12 per cent among cyclists and by 4 per cent among motorcyclists,
provisional data showed.

Campaigners said that the Government needed to act to address the widening
gulf in the safety of car drivers and other road users, including cyclists.

Sir Chris Hoy has called on the major parties to make “ambitious” pledges to
boost cycling in their manifestos, saying it would be a “dream scenario” if
the streets were safe enough for his infant son to cycle to school with his
Olympian father when he is older